I started Felt Pressure Washing to make money during the summers. I didn’t expect it to teach me more about business than anything I’ve read.
Here’s what running a service business actually looks like up close.
Operations Are Everything
In theory, the product is clean driveways and houses. In practice, the product is reliability.
Customers don’t remember that you did a great job if you showed up on the wrong day. They do remember if you showed up when you said you would, communicated clearly, and left without them having to follow up. Doing the actual work well is table stakes. Everything around it is what differentiates you.
This reshaped how I think about operations. A great process is one that runs consistently with minimal intervention. Early on I had to be involved in everything. That doesn’t scale. I started building checklists, templated estimates, and scheduling systems so the quality didn’t depend on me being the one doing every step.
Pricing is a Strategy Decision
I underpriced early because I was afraid of losing jobs. The problem is that low prices attract high-maintenance customers who are still price shopping after they’ve hired you. Raising prices filtered for customers who valued reliability over the cheapest option — and those customers were easier to work with and more likely to come back.
Pricing isn’t just about margin. It’s a signal about who you’re for.
Customer Service Is Competitive Advantage
Most service businesses have low expectations baked in. Customers have been burned before. They assume you’ll be late, vague, or hard to reach.
Beating those expectations is easy and wildly effective. Confirm appointments the day before. Reply to messages within an hour. Send a quick note when the job is done. None of this is complicated — it’s just consistent. And consistency is rare enough in this industry that it becomes a differentiator.
Data Matters Even at Small Scale
I tracked every job: date, service type, duration, revenue, customer, source. Most small operators don’t bother. I found patterns I wouldn’t have seen otherwise — which neighborhoods had the highest repeat rate, which services had the best margins, which referral sources converted best.
Small-scale data isn’t statistically significant. But it’s still better than operating on gut feel alone.
What Transfers
Running this business taught me to ask operational questions about any system I work with: Where are the bottlenecks? What breaks when demand increases? What’s the actual customer experience, step by step?
Those questions are useful whether you’re running a cleaning route or analyzing a supply chain.
Felt Pressure Washing is still operating. If you’re in the area, check us out.